Determining Sugar and Salt Content in Foods
It’s All About the Labels
Do you ever check the labels on the foods you buy? If not it is probably a good time to start. Even when you are not on a diet this can be a very useful source of information. And a greatly surprising one at times.
You might think salt is just an innocent ingredient you can frivolously add to your dishes. It is supposed to enhance the taste of food, but does it really? Have you ever thought how much salt you are taking in all the food you consume? It might be a lot more than you think; especially if you tend to go for more processed ingredients while cooking.
Just as most of today’s produce is over salted, it often contains more sugar than we would like. It is slightly shocking how we now consider products with the “no added sugar” label the healthy option. When we stop and think what that exactly means it is slightly shocking.
A variety of products naturally have different types of sugar in them. The moment you start checking out the labels it makes you want to question why most modern products cannot go without increasing the amount of sugar. Not to mention that these days, the fact that there is no added sugar can just as well mean that there are substances inside which can, in the long run, be even worse for you than the dreaded sugar.
Taste Affecting Ingredients
One of the things that both salt and sugar have in common is that they can affect your taste. An easy way to test this is to for example have a cup of tea with sugar in it, and try a cake afterwards. If you would repeat such an experiment with tea without sugar, you would find the cake tasting a lot sweeter.
Hidden Drugs
Salt has a similar effect. The moment you try to restrict or eliminate it from your diet you will find things lack taste. However in the long run, you can actually taste things better after you get over sugar and/or salt. Just like with drugs, your body gets used to both these ingredients over time, thus needing more to get a similar reaction.
Keep It Natural
Despite all the above, neither salt nor sugar, unless used in excessive amounts, have to be all that negative. As they both appear in foods naturally you cannot avoid them altogether, however watching those numbers and keeping it as natural as possible can definitely improve your health, as well as food experience.
